228: A Plague of Phantoms XII

"So what exactly is wrong Starlight?" Grandpa Seamus asked. I looked over my shoulder at my grandpa, who was keeping pace with me despite the circumstances.

Those circumstances being that we were both flying over the gold city towards Andromeda College. We weren't riding any of my evos and were instead flying thanks to a spell that I created on the spot. It was currently unnamed since it was created in the fly but it allowed anyone that was under its effects to have total control over their personal gravity, allowing them to fall or fly in any given direction.

I was acting as the mana supply for the both of us since grandpa was a normie and didn't have any mana. It was really draining since the spell wasn't polished so I was hoping to get to the college as quick as possible.

"I don't really know. Grimm-Guard stopped responding to me so I'm really starting to get worried." I replied as well flew over the main gates of the college.

"Ya sure that evo of yours ain't just ignoring ya?" Grandpa asked. I frowned and kept my eyes glued on the direction of the lab.

That was exactly what he was doing. Because of our connection I knew that he was could hear me and even felt pangs of regret and uncertainty every time I called out to him. He was purposefully ignoring me and that was not something Grimm-Guard would normally do. I'm pretty sure none of my evos would.

"Hey Starlight, there are a lot of people moving around below us…" Grandpa said.

  I looked down and saw a large group of the college's guardsmen all running in one singular direction. All of them had their evos out and I even saw the ten that had Ogarai among them. In the distance I could hear the faint sound of a warning alarm warning alarm suddenly rinkng loudly and I felt my heart drop when I recognized the direction it was coming from.

"Fuck! GRIMM-GUARD!" I exclaimed then flew faster. Grandpa heard the concern in my voice and sped up to keep pace with me. As we got closer to the lab the alarms got louder and louder until they were nearly deafening.

When we arrived at the laboratory we quickly landed and had to cover our ears because of the alarm. From the outside there didn't look to be anything wrong or any damage to the building. We were the first one there thanks to the flying spell so there was nobody to ask what was going on, save the ominously silent Grimm-Guard who was inside.

I hurried over to the door and placed my hand on it. The seals that kept it locked quickly scanned my hand and shattered shortly after. The door unlocked and slid open, I rushed inside without thinking and then skidded to a stop after taking only three steps. I wasn't prepared for what I saw.

The entire laboratory was in complete shambles. Shelves and techno-splicing equipment laid in pieces all over the ground, many of the vats and containers that I had stored on the shelves were shattered and their contents laying in pools. From the door I could see the vault looked unharmed though I could also see two things more troubling than all the damage. First, Grimm-Guard was nowhere to be seen and second, there was a enormous hole in the center of the laboratory where the maturation vat used to be.

"By the gods Starlight, what the hell happened here?" Grandpa asked as he stepped into the Laboratory behind me. I shook my head and absent-mindedly walked further into the building.

"I…I don't know…Grimm…where's Grimm?" I muttered absently. I looked up at the ceiling hoping to see him hiding in the shadows but there was some damage to the roof and sunlight was shining through. Fear started to grip my heart as I looked frantically around the vat-building.

"Starlight!" Grandpa Seamus exclaimed as he grabbed my shoulders. He looked me straight in the eyes, grabbing my attention and forcing me to focus on him. "Calm down and think! Do ya see any blood? Signs of a fight? No! All this looks like accidental damage ta me, like something was trying to get out of here and only causing more damage as they went along. That massive hole in the floor…something tunneled out, not in."

I took a few deep breaths and then looked around at the destruction again. Grandpa was right, there was a pattern to the destruction, everything was pushed outward and toppled towards the walls. All that combined with the fact that there was no blood or any signs of something or someone getting inside meant that the reason for all this destruction was Grimm-Guard.

"Grimm-Guard did all this…" I said softly then walked over to the hole in the center of the lab. With all the rubble and remains of all the equipment thrown all over the place I had to climb a little but I managed to reach the edge of the hole. "…no…there's no way he could have…"

Standing at the edge I could tell that the hole made was way too big for Grimm-Guard to have made. It was at least three times as wide as his body was and from where I was I could see it was only getting wider the further down it went.

"Ya sure about that Laddie?" Grampa asked as he stood beside me. He pointed down the hole and motioned to the part where it could be seen widening. "It looks like whatever made this hole was still growing, an' quickly at that. Kinda like how yer Liger Shark did earlier today…"

"Oh fuck…" I gasped and hung my head.

It all suddenly clicked into place. Grimm-Guard saying his body felt weird, the destruction of the laboratory, the massive hole. Grimm-Guard had undergone an evolution to his true transcended form thanks to all that mana that I sent to him and started to grow too large to stay inside the laboratory so he tunneled out but not before his larger body destroyed most of the equipment.

[That tunnel goes really deep Boss.] Bone-lasher informed me then shared his vision.

With his recent evolution to true transcendence Bone-lasher's electromagnetic vision seems to have extended even further. About nine miles if I was to guess but even with this new enhancement I couldn't see the bottom of the tunnel. It didn't help that the tunnel went straight down either.

"Fuck! This is my fault! I accidentally made Grimm-Guard evolve!" I exclaimed then looked to my grandpa. He sighed and shook his head and then poked me in the temple.

"Well tell him that, don't go acting like a idgit boy!" Grandpa exclaimed. I frowned and crossed my arms, giving him a side eye.

[Grimm! I know what happened in the Lab. Don't worry it wasn't your fault…] I said over the mental connection. At first I got no response and then suddenly I felt a waves of sadness, regret, disappointment, and self loathing hit me like a raging bull. I fell to my knees from the weight of the emotions.

[I'M SO SORRY STAR BOSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!] Grimm-Guard cried through the connection.

I struggled to suck in a breath as Grimm-Guard continued to apologize to me. Grandpa Seamus immediately knelt down beside me and asked me what was wrong but I couldn't answer. I felt like I was drowning under the weight of Grimm-Guard's emotions.

[GRIMM-GUARD CONTROL YOURSELF! YOU'RE HURTING THE STAR SHAPER!] Alpa'nagia hissed at the Militanto through the connection.

[You're…fine…it's alright!] I managed to get out, not wanting to make Grimm-Guard feel anymore guilty.

[Star Boss! I'm so sorry…] Grimm-Guard cried. I closed my eyes and focused on controlling my breathing then once I got that under control I focused on my connection to Grimm-Guard and then exerted my control over him to force him calm down as well.

"….STARLIGHT!" Grandpa Seamus bellowed at the top of his lungs, the panic in his voice was clear.. He'd been calling my name the entire time I tried to calm down but I was too focused to respond. I opened my eyes and looked at him, smiling softly.

"I'm fine Grandpa. Sorry I didn't respond." I apologized. Grandpa Seamus let out a loud sigh then shook his head.

"By the gods boy, don't scare me like that. I'mma old man. I can't take too many stocks like that…" He said.

"Sorry. Grimm-Guard's emotions got the better of me. I'm still trying to calm him down…" I explained. Grandpa nodded then stood and looked behind us.

"Well it looks like we have company." He said. I stood and looked over my shoulder and saw dozens of the college's guardsmen come funneling into the Laboratory. It took me a minute to notice that the alarms were still going off as well.

"Fuck…" I grumbled then mentally checked in on the connection with Grimm-Guard. He was still emotional but it was no longer to the point that I was getting weak in the knees. "…we'll have to deal with them later. Grimm-Guard is not here anymore and I need to hurry up and find him."

[Want me to explain everything to them my lord?] Empress asked. I paused for a second before responding.

[Yeah, follow after me once they know what's going on.] I replied.

I summoned Empress' crystalline structure and then flung it into the air then turned and grabbed grandpa Seamus by the shirt and jumped into the hole without warning.

"CHAAAAAAAAAAAASE!" Grandpa Seamus bellowed as we plummeted down the hole.

"We're fine! The hole goes straight down for at least nine miles! Plus that flight spell is still in effect! I'll tell you when to activate it!" I exclaimed, I had to yell over the sound of the wind rapidly flying past our ears.

"I'M TOO OLD TO BE JUMPING DOWN BOTTOMLESS PITS!" Grandpa Seamus yelled.

The hole was in fact not bottomless. In a few minutes we neared the bottom, which I got an early warning about thanks to Bone-lasher's vision. Grandpa and I activated the flying spell and slowed our descent until we both were hovering a few inches off the ground.

Now at the bottom of the hole that Grimm-Guard dug the first thing I noticed was that it was pitch black. Not a speck of light could be seen in any direction, even up. We were so far down that the light from warehouse no longer reached us. The second thing I noticed was if was insanely hot. At about the two mile mark I noticed that it was heating up so I quickly cast a spell to help regulate both Grandpa's and mine's temperatures, protect us from external heat, and allow us to breathe with no problems.

"We're twelve miles down…at least." Grandpa Seamus proclaimed. I heard him take a crew steps and watched him kneel down and run his hand over the rock on the tunnel floor with Bone-lasher's electromagnetic vision. "…We're lucky this continent doesn't have strong tectonic movement or we'd have burnt up in magma."

"How can you tell?" I asked.

"Sullivardic village is hidden more than forty miles underground. The village is really a cluster of smaller villages that drift all over the world in magma flows." Grandpa Seamus said.

"IT WHAT?!" I bellowed. I heard Grandpa Seamus chuckle.

"It's a right funny little trick. Each littler village is protected by a crystal sphere that's enchanted to protect them an keep them from drifting too far from the greater cluster." Grandpa Seamus explained.

"Wait…if the smaller villages are floating away from each other then how do you get between them?" I asked.

"Mana trains. It's what they're made for originally. It's also how I escaped with me ma and grandma." Grandpa Seamus replied. I heard a twinge of sadness in his voice along with hints of something else.

I bit my finger and started writing a spell on my forearm in blood. As I channeled mana into my arm I noticed that the blood I wrote in glowed with a odd red light before the utility spell sigil formed in front of my hand. Small orbs of light formed in front of the sigil and illuminated the area around me before they flew above mine and my grandpa's head and hovered there.

"Ah! That's better! I can frickin' see again." Grandpa Seamus sighed. I took a second to look around now that I had some light and wasn't relying on Bone-lasher's electromagnetic vision.

I already knew that we were standing at the bottom of a massive hole that Grimm-Guard dug and before it got too dark to see I saw plenty of evidence that Grimm-Guard grew as he dug but I hadn't realized how wide he'd grown. It looked like he made a sharp turn and started digging horizontally, in which direction I couldn't say, but the tunnel in front of me was at least fifteen feet wide and thirteen feet tall.

"Starlight…how big was this evo before?" Grandpa Seamus asked. I took a few tentative steps down the tunnel and shook my head.

"He was only six feet wide by seven feet tall…this looks like he's doubled in size at least." I replied. Grandpa turned to me and frowned.

"Gods alive laddie! Why did you make the thing so large?" He exclaimed.

"Hey! You saw the massive hole we just jumped down and all the destruction of my lab. Obviously Grimm was a big boy." I grumbled. Grandpa Seamus chuckled and shook his head.

"Well can you tell how far away the little bugger is?" He asked.

I closed my eyes for a second and focused on the mental link between Grimm-Guard and myself. It was the first time I had to use it to find one of my evos since all of them were so clingy they rarely ever left my side voluntarily. Grimm-Guard's emotions were mostly under control, I now only felt embarrassment and self-loathing. It felt like he was pretty far away however, like way more than ten miles at least.

"Fuck he's pretty far! And I think he's still moving." I said. Grandpa Seamus frowned and crossed hos arms.

"Can ya order it back?" He asked.

"Easily…however…" I started to trail off and grandpa quickly figured out what I wanted to say.

"However yer worried 'bout it being too big now to surface safely…so yer thinking its better to follow after it and hope it burrows out of the city limits." Grandpa summarized. I nodded. "Gods alive, yer working ya poor Grandpa ragged Starlight."

"I can always have one of my other evos take you back to the surface if it's too much of a problem…" I muttered as I looked away from in in embarrassment. Grandpa laughed heartily and clapped me on the back.

"I'm just funning ya Laddie. Come on, let's go get yer troublesome evo. Besides my doctor back in the States would be loving me walking ten miles." Grandpa Seamus exclaimed. I smiled and turned to look down the tunnel.

The spell I cast to allow us to fly was costing too much mana to upkeep but a one time spell that increased Grandpa's and mine's speed would be a lot more manageable. I bit my finger and wrote more runes on my arm. As I did that a light shined down from the hole above us. I looked up and saw Empress, her body fully aflame and flying down as per my instructions.

"MY LORD!" Empress called out as I finished my spell and started channeling mana into my arm. I looked up at her as I started casting a axiom spell sigil.

"Empress!" I called out as two beams shot from the sigil and curved around to strike my grandpa and me. Lightning started sparking off our bodies and I felt a rush of adrenaline as the spell started to take effect. Empress landed in front of me and extinguished her flames since she could see with my light source.

"I informed the guardsmen what happened as well as Dean Baxter, my lord." Empress reported, giving me a slight bow as she finished. I arched a brow at her.

"Dean Baxter?" I asked. Empress nodded and stood up straight.

"He came to turn off the alarm and get a report from the guardsmen. I informed him as well what happened and that you were already looking into it." Empress explained further. I nodded then looked down the tunnel.

"Thanks Empress. Keep up, we're going after Grimm-Guard!" I exclaimed then ran down the tunnel, the ground under me shattering from the force of my first step as a sonic boom echoed down the tunnel.. Grandpa Seamus quickly followed after me and kept pace.

"Well I'll be! I feel like a thirty year old, running like this!" Grandpa exclaimed as the two of us made tracks down the tunnel.

"That should keep you from getting tired for a bit and increases your speed." I said. Concern clouded Grandpa's face as he looked at me.

"Yer not burning through your mana are ya lad? You've casted a lotta spells today. I know you Star farm crystal bearers have a lot but there are limits." Grandpa asked.

"I'm at about half…maybe a little below half. I've gotten really good at controlling my mana and using it efficiently in the last couple months." I replied.

At that time I heard a loud sonic boom echoed behind Grandpa and I, looking over my shoulder to see Empress quickly gaining on us. She was focusing the flames that normally engulfed her body into specific points behind her wings to create concentrated streams of flames that propelled her forward at astonishing speeds. I smiled a little at seeing this, it showed just how intelligent she was becoming. Taking the basic tools she had and finding different ways to apply them other than attacking. Empress soon caught up with Grandpa and I and then slowed down to match our speed.

"My lord, have you tried talking to Commander Grimm-Guard?" Empress asked.

"Not in a little bit. While we were falling I talked with to calm him down but every time I bought up him coming back to the surface or meeting me somewhere he freaked out about the damage to the Laboratory." I replied.

"Understandable…getting was given the task to protect part of your domain. As one charged with a similar duty I can understand his distress for causing its destruction." Empress said. I groaned and ran my hands through my locks.

"It wasn't even his fault! It was mine! I'm the one that sent him all that mana without thinking!" I exclaimed.

"That wouldn't matter. What matters is he destroyed part of your domain. I can feel his embarrassment and desire to hide from you. He fears your anger and disappointment." Empress said.

'If anything having to chase after him is going to piss me off more than the destruction of the laboratory.' I thought.